Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US black) spirituality, magic, thus power and influence; also attrib.

1927		Ida Cox [song title] Mojo Hand Blues.
1937		Robert Johnson ‘My Little Queen of Spades’ 🎵 Everybody say she got a mojo, now she’s been using that stuff / Mmmm, everybody say she got a mojo, cause she’s been using that stuff.
1958		Hughes & Bontemps Book of Negro Folklore 375: You may tip out sweet poppa, while tippin’ is grand, / But yo’ tippin’ will be over when Momma gits her Mojo hand.
1960		C. Himes Big Gold Dream 66: She said it was just mojos and potions and charms [...] African and Haitian stuff.
1973		D. Goines Street Players 142: You must have your mojo workin’, girl.
1980		(con. 1950s) M. Thelwell Harder They Come 62: This is the cool fool with the live jive with mah mojo workin’ and the music perkin’.
1999		Observer Screen 20 June 6: He time-travels back to 1969 to recapture his mojo, aka his libido.
2000		Guardian 12 Jan. 23: This is one man who knows how to keep his mojo working.
2003		G. Tate Midnight Lightning 112: The musicians were working their ‘Mojo’, I didn’t want that sound to ever stop.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 213: They refused to allow the hippies back home to sap their mojo.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 278: Te had got his mojo back. Didn’t take long.
2012		T. Robinson ‘Last Call’ in Dirty Words [ebook] Josh’s nerves were interfering with my mojo.

2. (US drugs) any narcotic drug, esp. morphine.

1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 77/1: Mojo, any of the poisonous habit forming narcotics (dope).
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 156: mojo Morphine.
1953		Anslinger & Tompkins Traffic In Narcotics 312: mojo. Drugs, especially morphine, heroin, or cocaine.
1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 179: mojo [...] heroin, cocaine, or morphine.
1972		D. Dalby ‘African element in American English’, in Kochman Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out 182–3: mojo — [...] mainly used today in sense of ‘something working in one’s favor,’ also ‘narcotics’.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 15: Mojo — Cocaine; heroin.
2013		T. Dorsey Riptide Ultra-Glide 22: Coke [...] Charlie, Chippy, Belushi, Foo-Foo, Merck, mojo, movie star [etc].

3. (US black) a kind of dance.

1970

B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 60: She let her pussy do the mojo, the pop-grow, the turkey, and the grind, / left Dolomite’s ass nine strokes behind.

4. (US prison) synthetic marijuana.

2016

Mother Jones July/Aug. 🌐 The inmate says he was caught recently with two ounces of ‘mojo,’ or synthetic marijuana.